A Word About Twitter Maintenance

I’m sitting here at the dealership trying to be productive while they change the oil in my Fiesta. And it occurs to me that I don’t often talk about maintenance when it comes to Twitter.

*What’s with the featured image, you ask? I had no idea until today that I could write a draft on the WordPress app on my iPad for my self-hosted install. Lame. I know. But just in case I’m not the only one who doesn’t know this, there you go.

Back to our regular story.

When it comes to Twitter, we primarily talk about being social and lists and doing things that are fun like chats.

But maintenance. No one likes that. I mean, it’s me and one other lady here on a Friday night. This is not what people want to get done on the night traditionally known as “date night.” For me, this is the most convenient time, and I like the quiet.

Maintenance Mondays

What can I say? I need a gimmick.

So on Mondays, I do all things maintenance. Once a week. Done.

I sign into ManageWP.com for WordPress updates. I also sign into my Twitter accounts, unfollow the unfollowers, and take a look at the analytics. It also happens to be trash day, but that’s irrelevant.

Why do I unfollow people?

I discuss this in depth on the post about Twitter Lists (read this post here) but Twitter enforces ratios. They don’t tell the ratio explicitly, but if you don’t have. 1:1 ratio, you can’t follow anyone else once you hit 2k, 5k, 9k, 14k, and 19k followers. At least, that has been my experience.

Looking at Analytics

Twitter itself has great analytics. You can either navigate to Analytics.Twitter.com while signed in or select Analytics from the drop down. You can see your top tweet, mention, follower, media, and card tweet.

Here is a GIF navigating through the different parts of Twitter’s Analytics.

You can also see your 28 day snapshot for followers impressions, engagement, and links. If you have Twitter cards enabled on your site (which you should – it can be done in Yoast SEO), you can see the top posts being tweeted from your site and the most influential tweeters.

This isn’t all. Twitter will show you social data like gender, household income, and top interest categories of your followers. Below are screenshots of the different sections.

August Top Tweet and Mention

August Top Follower, Media Tweet, and Card Tweet

August Twitter Top Influencers for Card Tweets

August Audience Demographics

What about Google Analytics?

Mobile Screenshot of Tweet Activity

Of course you should still use Google Analytics but really it’s an “indexing and benchmarking tool” as Jason Knill says. You’re not going to get quite the detail about what tweets really hit home from Google Analytics.

Or maybe you can. If you know how to do this, leave me a comment.

What about Mobile?

If you quickly want to see what is going on with your account, just log into Twitter Analytics.

Unfortunately, you can only see this information on desktop. On mobile, you can see the activity on a tweet by tweet basis.

Why does this matter?

If you’re a brand, say, and your audience skews 65% male, you may want to include more masculine information (sports, men’s fitness, etc). You can decide this based upon the data.

Taking a look at your Twitter analytics can be an easy way to find out what is resonating with your audience.

Buffer recently wrote a thorough piece on the top 10 tweets from their account. The binding theme, for them, is that they are fun and include a self-explanatory graphic.

Adjusting Your Messaging

Again, if you feel like you’re in a Twitter Rut, maybe you should take a look at your analytics. See what people like. Try doing more of that.

When I feel too “linky,” meaning sending out too many things that require reading to respond, I’ll just post a photo tweet or a text only tweet. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Top tweets are more likely to be recycled, as well. So fill up your Hootsuite, Buffer, or other preferred Tweet Scheduler. If there is any social media platform that tolerates both volume and repetition (within reason), it’s Twitter.

Your Turn

What kind of things do you do in the way of Twitter Maintenance? I’d love to hear your ideas to keep things fresh and new.

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